Up till recently I have always done my weight training in the popular 'bodybuilder' style which is to break up my muscles into groups and to train different body parts on different days.
This method of training is pretty much what you will see almost everyone do and if you go to a gym it is highly likely how your gym instructor will write out your training program.
For years I have believed that this is the correct and the best way to train and as my strength and muscle mass have continuously improved over time, I have had no reason to question my training methods.
Now I am not building up to say that these training methods are no good, because as I have just stated I've had good results from them in fact I still believe that for bodybuilders this is the best way to train for the purpose of growing and shaping your muscles.
I am not a bodybuilder and neither is the general weight lifter.
Most of us are maybe looking to put on a little size, but our main goal is to build functional strength, get into shape and keep our bodies in good condition.
So if our goal is not bodybuilding then why would we train like bodybuilders? Well we shouldn't and to find the answers to how we should be training I have started to look back in time to the days before bodybuilding, to the days of the strongmen and their training principals.
The pre bodybuilding style of training was to look at the body as a whole unit to train it as such.
The majority of their exercises incorporates the whole body and allows you to use your body as a fully functioning unit as it is meant to be instead of training it in separate sections.
You wouldn't train each member of a sports team separately because if you did they would not be able to function as a team to their full capacity.
Your body is just the same; to be able to use your strength gains at full capacity then you need to train all the sections of your body as a 'team'.
By performing weighted lifts and incorporating your entire body in the action you are training your body to work under load in a way that will be most useful in day to day life.
When you train in the bodybuilder style and break up your body into sections you usually only train the muscles you are targeting while the others basically rest, well in day to day life most actions require you to be using all your muscle together, so why not train them together? Now there are a lot of exemptions and quite a few of the exercises done in the strongman style are the same as the ones done by bodybuilders, this is because bodybuilders took a lot of the strongman moves because they are so good but unfortunately they did not take some of the best of them.
It is not so much the exercises that we are looking at changing although pretty much all of the isolation exercises should be canned in my opinion but more so it's the method of training we should be looking at.
Now I am far from an expert in this style of training but the more old training books I read the more the strongman style of training makes sense for the average weight trainer.
Revolutionize your training, take a step back in time and train like the strongmen of old for a far more functionally strong body.